


Overcoming

by ewinfic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 19,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9072055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewinfic/pseuds/ewinfic
Summary: She doesn't like to be touched.





	1. Pain

She doesn’t like to be touched.

You wouldn’t know it to watch her, because she doesn’t flinch away when people reach for her. She doesn’t cower or avoid, she initiates contact frequently. From the outside, she appears warm; touchable. That quality is an asset in her line of work, and being a consummate professional, she would never let on just how much she loathes the act of submitting to the touch of another human being.

So the first time they’re alone together, she puts on the usual body-length mask of approachability, thinking this will be like all the other times.

He doesn’t fall for it, not even for a second.

He has assassin’s eyes, eyes made to detect moments of vulnerability and points of weakness. He has eyes just like hers. They can see past what people want him to see, past what people feel they’ve hidden from him, and even past what they’ve hidden from themselves. He sees the mask painted all over her body, and beyond it, he sees that she does not want this.

He’s not psychic, though. He doesn’t know the reason why, not by reading it off her. To know the reason why, he has to dig deeper.

He has to be her.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what he is.

“Hold out your hand,” he whispers. They’re both creatures of darkness and silence, and it’s natural to speak as quietly as possible. He knows that she hears him.

She smirks and holds out her hand, loosely, the line of her arm effortlessly graceful in a way that seems untutored to any eyes but his. But he admires her for her art. He was never taught to dance, he was taught to bludgeon, and something in him yearns toward the way that she moves. He’s felt that way since the first moment he saw her. A part of him wants to destroy her because she’s so perfect, smash her to pieces; another part of him wants to preserve her behind glass and lock her away…

The largest part of him simply wants whatever she would freely give him.

But… freely. Anything else, and she would simply be another victim.

He doesn’t want another victim.

So he reaches for her hand, and instead of touching her, strokes the air surrounding the skin of her arm. Not making contact, he traces a line from her wrist, curving up to the inside of her elbow. "This,“ he whispers.

Her eyes are uncertain for a moment. He’s broken the script. So she keeps it simple, trying to gauge what he’s after. "That,” she replies in a silken murmur that nearly fades into thin air before it reaches his keen ears.

“This… this is where it hurts after you’ve twisted a knife that was planted in bone.”

She looks down at her hand, flexes it and turns it over, and when she looks back up at him, he can see that she’s gone from smugly expectant to deadly serious. He’s just offered her something true. She has an intensely painful decision to make, and he honestly doesn’t know which choice is the right one for her. He trusts her to know.

She silently holds her left hand up, palm facing him, and he pauses for a moment before matching the movement, mirroring her hand with his larger one. Larger, but not more calloused. The roughness and strength in their hands are nearly identical.

She indicates, tracing the air, the muscle connecting the interior of his thumb to the muscles of his forefinger. "This is where you start to shake after firing a GSh-18 over a hundred times in an hour.“

He nods. "And you can feel yourself aiming…” his hand glides toward her shoulder and takes a turn toward her collarbone, “… just here, for the next few days.”

She moves a tiny bit closer to him, and he keeps his hand just barely away from her skin. He can see doubt in her eyes, and humor, and perhaps a tiny bit of approval. She has decided to play his little game and see where it leads.

She uses the soft back of her hand to indicate the line of tendon from behind his ear down to the join of his shoulder, so close to touching him that he can feel the hairs on his neck rise. "The ache here never really goes away, from looking quickly over your shoulder.“

He nods. "It never really does.”

As they move closer together, the shadows deepen between them, until it seems that they are being knitted to each other by threads of darkness.

He sculpts the air around her ear, trying to make his near-touch as deft and delicate as hers. "Your ears never entirely recover from close-range weapons firing, grenades, shells… screams. There’s always a little bit of a hum.“

She glances at his hand, turning her face toward it, and her eyelashes nearly brush the heel of his palm. She looks back, searching his eyes. He hopes that she can see that he’s hiding nothing right now. Because there’s nothing to hide; not from her. Her own eyes have the same secrets, which means they aren’t secrets at all anymore.

Her eyes narrow a little, her lips quirk up a tiny bit. It’s either uncertainty or humor, or perhaps both. She moves her hand down the side of his body, outlining his hipbone. "Kicking in doors?” He realizes that she’s guessing. She would never need to kick in a door. She always has other ways of getting inside.

He nods. "Yeah, it hurts there afterward. Depending on the door.“ Time to make a guess himself. He moves a touch closer and gently strokes the air just at her waist and a little bit forward of her hip. He says, "Breaking necks with your thighs?”

She nods. "Very hard on the side abs.“

"I can only imagine.”

Her eyes grow serious now, as she takes both hands and molds the air around his left arm, all the way up to his shoulder. In a voice so quiet even he can barely hear it, she says, “Where does this hurt you?”

He flexes his metal arm, making a sound like keys twisting in multiple locks. The pain is always there; it never entirely goes away. He’s never told anybody. "It hurts everywhere you see silver.“

Her eyes soften a little, and he can see that it’s not an act. She truly understands. She also has places that never cease to hurt.

He doesn’t know what to do about that. He’s not a healer.

But he can ask.

"Where do men hurt you?” he whispers in a tone that threatens the men he’s referring to. It’s a cheap gesture, protectiveness. She won’t appreciate it. But he can’t not threaten them; it’s the only form of love his present self can do easily.

Her eyes grow chilly. "Nowhere,“ she breathes. "They’ve made me numb inside and out.”

Which is why I don’t want to touch you, he doesn’t say. Because then I would just be another man, trampling all over what’s not mine. He stands there, not touching her, until she realizes that he’s not going to. Until that tiny smile finally returns to her lips and eyes.

“And where do women hurt you?” she asks, almost playfully, almost deadly.

He doesn’t want to say it. This is taking vulnerability to a dangerous level. But he’s offered her truth until now, and he’ll continue to offer it as long as she wants it. He whispers, “Women never touch me. Only one woman has ever hurt me.”

She moves, and now they’re so close that her breasts are nearly touching his chest, and that possibility alone means that only years of training and discipline permit him to keep his breath even and silent. She says, “And where did she hurt you?”

Saying it will hurt, but that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? So he says it. "Everywhere. All through me.“

Her eyes widen a little. He’s just told her that he loves her, and she knows it.

It’s not the first time a man has declared love for her, he’s sure of that. But maybe it’s the first time that her own body has answered. He can feel it in her, see it in her; an awakening, a readiness.

She says, "Touch me.”

Every part of his body is thrumming with energy now, aching, humming, determined to be fulfilled. This hurts more than anything he has ever felt, and he knows that the pain isn’t going to stop. She simply can’t be taken. Not the way he would want to. What she’s offering is a consolation, it’s not her real self. She said she was numb, inside and out, and he knows better than to think there’s a miracle of sensation that would soften that coldness. What she had said was the simple truth.

He shakes his head. "No.“

A tiny flame of anger lights behind her eyes, but it goes out quickly; now it’s mere surprise. Nobody has ever refused her before.

Then, slowly but surely, he can see it. It’s like the softly encroaching light of a sunrise from behind a hillside, it infuses her all over, slowly but fully.

She softens, for perhaps the first time in her adult life; she melts.

Tears pool in her eyes, not many, but enough to be visible. One of them breaches the barrier, sliding down her cheek. More than anything, he would love to wipe it away with his right hand… the one that can still touch tenderly. At least, he thinks it could; he’ll never know for sure. The pain increases. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t move.

She smiles at him, a new kind of smile, hesitant and vulnerable and strange to both of them.

She says, "Thank you.”

The pain peaks, and he feels his own eyes suddenly brimming. She blurs in his vision, but it doesn’t matter, because he has her absolutely committed to memory. He drops every shield, and lets his eyes shine out to her how much he loves her, how he would do anything for her. Even this. He does it gladly, because it’s what she needs from him. He lets the pain wash over him like a cleansing, and he says, “You’re welcome.”

She lifts her face, and he lowers his reflexively, but keeps himself from breaking the air between them. Her lips part, and she kisses the space just in front of his mouth; she kisses his breath. He closes his eyes, feeling her phantom kiss all over his body.

When he opens his eyes, she’s gone.

He takes a deep breath and sighs. It hurts. Everything hurts.

But he knows he’ll treasure the pain he feels right now forever, because it’s hers.


	2. Cruelty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems like cruelty. Not the deliberate cruelty of a sadist nor the malicious cruelty of an enraged foe, but the compulsive, instinctive cruelty of a cat toying with a dying mouse.

He doesn't quite know how to interpret it at first.

It seems like cruelty. Not the deliberate cruelty of a sadist nor the malicious cruelty of an enraged foe, but the compulsive, instinctive cruelty of a cat toying with a dying mouse.

She touches him.

Not often, certainly not often enough to be noticed by anybody else. Not too intensely, either. Usually it's the barest brush of a shoulder or a glancing swipe of careless fingertips. To anybody else, it might seem almost accidental. He knows her too well, though. Nothing she ever does is by accident.

He made her a promise, that first night that he told her how he felt about her. The fact that it was unspoken only makes it more binding. He would never touch her on purpose; that was the agreement. What he didn't realize at the time was that he was depending upon her to never touch him in return. He thought she would never try to tempt him, that she would respect how incredibly difficult a choice he had made.

Another man might get angry, but he isn't another man. Assassins can't afford anger. Anger clouds judgment, just like love does. Training steers him away from anger and toward analysis.

_Why is she doing this?_

_Because she wants to test me._

It doesn't seem likely. She knows torture methodology, knows just how fragile and brittle a thing the human will truly is. People break, usually far sooner and far more easily than you expect. She knows him as well as he knows her; knows him for a man of strength and determination. But she also knows that he's human. Humans are dominated by frailties of the mind and body. When you make an art of breaking people, you quickly learn never to bend someone too far unless you don't care if they crumble.

And if she truly wanted to break him, the ways and means are readily available to her. Everybody already knows the things that have broken him in the past, the things that would break him again, given the chance. There's no mystery here.

Still, she watches him, and she touches him infrequently but with maddening constancy.

_Why is she doing this?_

_Because she wants to test herself._

Again, not likely. She's been tested to the limit herself, many times. Perhaps she hasn't been broken completely, but she's been cracked a time or two. Enough to know where the fault lines lie. There's no percentage in putting herself under deliberate strain, not at this point in her life. There's no advantage.

He wonders whether she enjoys it. The answer to that question would give him the answer to so many others. She doesn't seem to react overtly to it, though, she merely touches him and then goes on her way, as though nothing happened. He can't read or smell a change in her after these points of contact.

_Why is she doing this?_

_Because she wants to heal herself._

That's a possibility, but just the thought of it makes his throat and chest tight, his eyes narrow. There is a part of him that wants her to be whole and touchable and receptive, open, and that part of him is a massive, growling beast that he can just barely keep under his control. It's a twisted kind of hope, mixed with lust and something else, something deep, a longing that cuts him.

The idea that she might be experimenting, trying to get herself accustomed to being in contact with him, is enough to shake that beast nearly awake. He struggles to keep it dormant.

If she's trying to heal herself, it's dangerous. She could fail. She will very likely fail. And to approach the cusp of consummation with her and suddenly have it snatched away would break parts of him that have so far remained tenuously whole.

Hope ravages him and leaves him panting for breath. He tries to quell it. She will very likely fail. A fact that she knows, which makes it unlikely that she would try.

_Why is she doing this?_

_Because she can't stop._

There's something about the way she does it, that cat-like sense of fascination. The cruelty of it, that seems so unlike her. The glancing caress of her fingers, like the troubled flutter of a fearful bird. Perhaps she's not just the cat, but also the mouse, ensnared by her own instincts.

She repeatedly engages in the forbidden... because it's there.

Something about it rings true to him. After all, why does he love her? There's no rationale behind it, no deeper meaning. He loves her because she is who she is. He loves her because she's there.

Perhaps something similar is happening to her.

He realizes that he hasn't given her enough room to be human in this situation. He's idolized and idealized her to the point where he's failed to give her credit for the most basic of human needs: curiosity, impulsivity. She wants to know if touching him is different from touching anybody else. Maybe she _needs_ to know it.

Which means he has to let her keep doing it, without touching back. Because his promise is still in effect.

He recalls a mission in the tropics, awaiting the appearance of a mark from a watch point in a tree. Stickiness, sweltering heat... and the stinging flies. He couldn't swat them away. He had to endure it, let their tiny bites rise as heat on his skin and remain perfectly still as they fed on him. He couldn't lose focus. Enduring it felt like a kind of intoxication after the first few minutes, a heady, floaty feeling that didn't leave him until he finally pulled the trigger.

This could be endured like that.

He lets her touch him, feels it like the stinging of the flies. He lets himself drop into a slight trance when she's near him, so that he can bear it. Tiny whip-cracks of sensation, miniature storms of emotion. He lets them pass over and through and beyond him, and dwindle their way off into the air.

He lets her have what she needs.

_Why is she doing this?_

_I don't care why. I just don't want her to stop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to decide whether I'm ruining this story by adding to it, but I'm going to trust my instincts on this one. Bucky and Nat just didn't want to leave it there.


	3. Breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're offering me what's easy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating of the fic has changed; it's not explicit yet, but it will be.

"Touch me."

"No."

"Do it."

"You don't want it."

"Don't tell me what I want!"

Her eyes are hot, and he doesn't know why she's doing this. He wants so badly to hold her, now, to see if his arms are capable of something like that. He wants to fix what's wrong. He's not a fixer. "Why are you doing this, Natasha?" He can hear the wounds in his own voice. Most people would just hear a low growl. He wonders what she hears.

She swallows hard, and touches his face, and leaves her hand there. It burns like hot glass. He wants to kiss her hand. She says, "I can make it so good for you." He recognizes the tone of her voice; low and smooth. Seductive. He almost hates her for that; it's been weeks since they dropped the pretense of seduction and admitted what there truly was between them, and now she's turned back the clock.

"What about it being good for you?"

She grimaces and lets the act drop, along with her hand. The departure of her touch leaves a small fiery imprint on his cheek. "You want the impossible, Bucky. I'm offering you what's possible."

He pauses before saying it; he knows she'll hate him for it. "You're offering me what's easy."

Her eyes widen. She does hate him for it. "You think this is easy for me?"

"Pretending? Yes."

Her stance rigidifies for a moment, and then suddenly relaxes, her muscles fluid, and he thinks by the way she's balanced in front of him that she's going to fight him. If she fights him, he'll fight back. He respects her enough to fight back; he knows she can kill him if he doesn't resist, and he doesn't want to die.

So when she kicks out at him, he blocks it. It's a glancing blow, she wasn't lashing out with full power. It was a test. He can't read the look in her eyes.

She punches, and he blocks it again. Even touching this way is having its effect upon him, he's sweating and his chest feels tight again. Combining sexual tension with the tension of combat is almost more than he can take.

She begins to circle him, and he backs away slightly and matches her movement, the two of them revolving around and against each other like rogue planets ensnared in each other's gravity.

She lunges for him and he dodges. He hits the ground and she twists in the air, cat-like, to land on her feet. Before he can roll away, she's on top of him.

Her weight isn't enough to keep him pinned, but the fact that she's straddling his waist and pressing her chest against his and sliding her hands up his arms, these things are enough to make him gasp and tremble, helpless for a moment.

She presses her cheek against his and breathes into his ear, "Touch me." Her hair falls across his mouth. It smells like spice and fire.

For an instant he weakens enough to let himself imagine it. In his mind, his hands rise and take her, they slide over her perfect body, finding the fastenings of her clothing and undoing them, revealing her skin. In his mind, he rolls her over and begins to kiss her all over, begins to--

He stops himself and realizes that they're both trembling now. He's as hard as a rock in his pants, and he knows she can feel it.

He raises one hand toward her face, traces the curve of her jawline, almost touching it, and lets his hand drop again. "I can't. Don't you understand that I can't?"

"Why not?"

"Because I want you for real," he breathes. He wishes he had better words, smoother ones. He's never been a lover, only a soldier with only a soldier's vocabulary. He can't describe what he truly wants from her, to feel her body rise with passion and open itself to him completely; and what if she did? How could he possibly be gentle enough with his warrior's fists? Someday, some man would come to claim her, someone capable of being gentle and kind to her, someone with the right words, and that man would know how to touch her without hurting her. Someone else. Not him.

She touches his cheek again, leaving another fiery imprint beside the first. Her eyes fill with tears. "I'm offering you what I have to give, and you're refusing it."

His heart thuds in his chest, and he suddenly understands. She's trying her best to love him. Perhaps she even does love him. But she can't force her body to do what it won't do, so she offers the illusion, because it's all she has.

For a moment, he desperately wishes he could accept.

His voice is hollow and grating, not soft and beseeching as he wishes it could be, and he still doesn't know the right words so he uses the only ones he has. "I know what it's like to be taken and used. I can't do that to you. Please..." his voice lowers to a whisper. "Please let me up."

He can see the defeat in her eyes before she finally backs away and off him, and he hates himself for not being what she needs. Meanwhile, his entire body is thrumming with life, everywhere she was pressed against him is burning with electricity.

He sits up, and she kneels next to him.

"Do you even want me?" she asks softly.

"I could talk for a hundred years and never describe how badly I want you," he says just as softly, and he thinks, _That wasn't bad. That was almost poetic._

The quiet surrounding them is absolute. She impatiently wipes her eyes. "So we're at an impasse."

"I guess so."

She studies him. "Can we spar?"

He considers it for a moment. It's a form of touching they're both intimately familiar with, and they are both skilled enough to do it without hurting each other.

"Bucky."

Something in her voice catches at him and forces him to lean in toward her. Her lips are slightly parted. He swallows. "Yes?"

"I need to be close to you. I don't even know why. It's not the same as... as what I've heard... as what I've imagined..." she stops, searching for words. It shocks him, that she has to search for words. "I don't want sex, but I just need to be close to you somehow. In whatever way we can."

Sparring. For decades, it was the gentlest form of touch he ever experienced from another human being. He thinks he can do this.

"Very well."


	4. Collision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU of sorts. It takes place in a world where Bucky has either joined or become friendly with the Avengers just after CAWS. So naturally Steve had to show up eventually...

_Circle-jab-circle-kick-block-sweep-block-jab-block-bar-circle--_

He watches her closely. She doesn't telegraph her moves as badly as most people do, which makes it difficult to block her in time. He's been playing their sparring matches almost completely defensively. Perhaps it's because he doesn't want to hurt her. Or perhaps he still feels that initiating touch is breaking his promise. Whatever the reason, he spends most of his time blocking punches and kicks.

They've made a tacit agreement not to use weapons.

Without weapons, he has the edge on her. He's less agile, but he's almost as fast as she is and far stronger. And his left arm is still a weapon. He uses it carefully, because he knows it could easily kill her. Sometimes his metal arm reacts to things before thought, as though it has its own sensors. He tries to lead with his right shoulder to keep it out of the way.

If she notices that he's holding back, she doesn't show it. She attacks him without the least bit of temperance. She had said that she needed to be close to him; perhaps this is the expression of that.

Occasionally her attacks seem angry, such as when she's having a bad day. Most of the time, though, they are businesslike and efficient, graceful, economical. Her body seems to be subject to her absolute control in a way that he envies. He suspects that she governs the movement of each individual muscle when she works out.

They spar three or four times across two weeks. They could probably get together more frequently, but there's something a little too intense about these encounters; he can't handle them more than once every few days. He doesn't know the limit of her tolerance, but she lets herself be guided by his suggested schedule.

Then comes the fifth session, and she starts fighting dirty.

It's subtle at first, and then gradually more overt. She's touching him more than she needs to in order to attack him. She substitutes grappling for more glancing contact, grabs for punches, sweeps instead of kicks. He finds himself in a clinch with her more than once, and it's nearly intolerable to hold each other that closely, to catch the scent of her hair again and feel her breasts pressed against him.

The third clinch seals it for him, he whispers through gritted teeth, "You're doing this on purpose," and throws her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her. She gasps for a moment, but is on her feet quickly.

"Of course I'm doing this on purpose," she says, her voice low and determined as they circle each other again. "Touching you is the whole point." She launches herself at him, slings her body around him and lands on his back with her arm around his neck, cutting off his air. As he struggles to grab her and throw her off, she delicately bites his earlobe.

He drops to his hands and knees, rendered helpless.

After a moment, she lets him go and says, "That's probably enough for today."

He gazes at her. He both loves and hates what's happening to him.

Of course someone else had to notice what was going on between the two of them, and of course that someone would be Steve. Steve misinterprets things sometimes, but he notices everything. He always has.

Bucky feels Steve noticing gradually, and steels himself for the day Steve finally decides to mention it. Because Steve can't not meddle.

"Wouldn't it be easier if you two just went on a date?"

Bucky groans and puts his head in his hands. He mumbles through his fingers, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Sorry, buddy." Steve sits beside him and puts a hand on his shoulder. It's a simple touch; comforting, familiar. Nothing like the kind of electricity inspired by Natasha. At the moment, that's a blessing. "It's just pretty obvious you like each other."

"Is it?" Bucky asks, because it's not obvious to him at all. He wonders why not. He's easily as observant as Steve is, given his training. But he's been trained to observe other things than emotions.

"Well, I'll put it this way: you're being really gentle, and she's being really aggressive, and both of those things point to the same conclusion." Steve frowns at the look on Bucky's face. "I take it this isn't a good thing."

Bucky studies Steve for a moment, considers telling him everything. But they aren't his secrets to reveal. "I don't know yet. But it's not... simple." He takes a deep breath. "I'm not sure we're right for each other."

"Only way to find out is to try and see what happens."

Bucky wishes it were that easy. Hell, maybe it really is that easy, but it certainly doesn't seem like it.

Steve tends to be right an annoying amount of the time, though.

So the next time they spar, when she catches Bucky in a back hold, her thighs snug around his waist, he gasps out, "We should have dinner sometime."

She's so surprised that she lets go, and he pivots and presses her to the ground with his weight. She grunts and struggles, and says, "Are you... asking me on a... date?"

"I think so, yes."

He watches her eyes as she slowly stops struggling. He sees doubt and fear, and maybe some hope, and--if he hadn't spent the last months reading her every facial expression like a book he can't get enough of, he would miss it--just the slightest touch of pleasure. She's flattered. She says, "I can't promise I won't try to take advantage of you."

"I can make that promise."

It happens again. She smiles a soft wondering smile; she melts at the absolute knowledge that he's not going to try to take what he can't have. But this time, she's doing it with their bodies pressed together, so he can feel her shiver and soften... his fingers twitch and he closes his eyes, cursing. She says, "What's wrong?"

"I didn't say it was an easy promise." He lets her up, backing away slightly. He knows his face is flushed.

Her eyes look inquisitive for a moment. _Then why make it?_ He waits until she realizes the answer yet again.

He stands up and offers her his hand. She takes it, pulls him off balance and throws him to the ground again, and laughs a little. It takes him a while to catch his breath, but when he does, he surprises himself by laughing with her.


	5. Damages

It's an epic failure, and strangely a total success at the same time.

First of all, he hasn't been on a date since 1941. Dating back then was slightly different. The girls he dated were _very_ different from the woman he wants to date now. And he himself was a very different creature. These days he's less domesticated, less smooth. He has edges in places where he didn't before, and many of those edges cut the people around him.

Just figuring out what to wear is a baffling and almost frightening process. He usually gravitates toward sweaters or other thick fabrics to cover the shape and the sound of his arm; most shirts are a little too revealing. Eventually he settles for a fairly nice shirt, but not a dress shirt. He doesn't want to have to wear a tie, anyway. Ties are too risky; it's quite an easy thing for somebody to strangle you or snap your spine when you're wearing a knotted silk rope around your neck. Jackets are a problem too, they impede shoulder and arm movement. He stares for several minutes at the dress pants he just bought before he finally puts them on. One good side kick and they would tear nearly in half.

These thoughts go through his mind, and he wonders just what in the hell he's playing at, trying to take Natasha out on a date.

Where to go is another conundrum. He doesn't want to go anywhere fancy, where etiquette could get complicated and expense would be a worry. He doesn't have much money. Then again, when he tries to think of what would be most appropriate, all he can imagine is that the finest food on glittering plates and silverware with satiny table cloths is worthy of her. She doesn't belong at a chain restaurant. But where does she think she belongs?

Natasha suggests a place, and without knowing anything about it, he nervously agrees.

She also has to pick him up. He doesn't have a driver's license, nor a car, and picking her up on his bike doesn't seem like a good idea. Standing on the street corner waiting for her, his hair uncharacteristically neat and his face uncharacteristically shaven, he feels stupid. This isn't who he is. He has to become an entirely different person in order to court her.

Why is she interested in him? He offers her nothing.

He thinks about that first night in the darkness, how she seemed so ready to sleep with him. How things might have gone differently had he been just a hair less sensitive to her signals and his own instincts. She wants him precisely because of the things that make him different from other men, but the things that make him different from other men are a deficit this evening.

When she pulls up to the curb in a sleek dark car and he gets in and looks at her, he immediately knows he's under-dressed. She's wearing a dress the color of fresh blood, trimmed in gold. It's not a floor-length gown, but it will look out of place next to a man not wearing a jacket. He starts to sweat. "Hi."

She smiles at him, not seeming to care about his clothing. "You shaved."

He resists the momentary, ridiculous urge to say _So did you_ and instead says, "You're all decked out."

"What, this old thing?" She winks at him and steps on the accelerator.

When they get to the restaurant, his stomach clenches. They hand the car off to a valet, and he immediately knows that he's way out of place, an impression that deepens when they enter the lobby, dimly-lit thankfully, accented in velvet and mahogany. Natasha's heels click softly on an elaborately inlaid marble floor.

The maître d' kindly offers him a jacket before seating them, and the jacket, while large, is still tight around Bucky's thick shoulders and arms. He sits in it stiffly at their table, feeling like a clown. Natasha looks perfect in her seat, not a single hair out of place. And the gleaming table cloth and place setting before her does indeed suit her... then again, she's made a career out of suiting herself to a variety of different places. He's spent most of the past seventy years in the equivalent of a cave.

The waiter's manners are perfect, and he senses Bucky's anxiety and begins to make polite suggestions. "How about two glasses of Chateau D'Arche with the brioche with gruyere and caramelized onions for a start?"

Natasha says, "That sounds lovely." For her entree, she orders the coq au vin.

Bucky merely shrugs and says, "Tell the chef to surprise me."

The food is good, but he can barely taste it, he's too busy watching her. She's donned one of her masks here, her movements graceful and delicate, her manners refined. It's fascinating, but it's not really _her_ , and it makes him uncomfortable, especially since he can't duplicate what she's doing.

"What do you think of the wine?"

He thinks that all wine tastes like buttered vinegar. "I'm not really any judge."

She smiles. "You look nice in a jacket."

"Thanks." He shrugs uncomfortably. "Frankly I'd like to tear it off."

"Now, now, save the pillow talk for later."

He wishes they were sparring again. That was utterly comfortable compared to this. He doesn't know which fork to use where, at one point he accidentally picks up a wine glass with his left hand and crushes it (the waiter assumes a politely neutral expression while cleaning up the mess), the jacket cuts into his armpits and he knows he's staining it with sweat. Natasha has a tiny smile on her face that seems to deepen as the night goes on, and he wonders whether she's laughing at his discomfort. That doesn't seem like her.

When the bill arrives, he quickly takes it. The total makes all of the blood drain from his face.

She takes one look at him, reaches over to pluck the bill right out of his hands, and says, "What are you thinking? I'm expensed this evening. Uncle SHIELD is covering this one." She puts her corporate card into the small leather folder.

"Expensed? You mean you're working?" He feels very flustered.

"SHIELD has been studying you, haven't they? I'm adding to their research by taking you out of your comfort zone."

He grimaces. "You noticed."

"Don't worry, it will all be over soon."

By the time they get back outside and reacquire the car, his face is alternately pale and flushed, he's clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth almost audibly, and all he wants to do is go home.

She stands on the gas as though desperate to get home herself, and he thinks, _She had a miserable time._

After a few moments on the road, she says, "You would have been happier if we'd eaten a sandwich together after a few rounds in the boxing ring, wouldn't you?"

He grimaces. "I'm happy if you're happy." He was never a very good liar.

She starts laughing.

He turns to her, angry. "What's so funny?"

"I just can't believe how real you are."

He blinks a few times. "Real."

"I think you may be the realest person I've ever met, Bucky. You are purely authentic. No lies, no devices. It's a little weird for me to be with someone like that. I'm so used to all these little social dance moves."

He sighs. "I used to be able to dance. Once upon a time, I could be charming, too."

She pulls the car over; they've reached his place. She says, "I don't know. I think you're quite charming as you are."

He shakes his head.

She gives him an unreadable look. "Tell me how badly you want me again."

He looks at her, letting his eyes embrace her full form, so casually and murderously sexual in the red dress and heels. It's not really her, though. She's more at home in one of her catsuits, he senses. _Those shoes look really uncomfortable._ But she's beautiful, as always, and as always, he does want her. "I would tear that dress apart and take you right here in the car, if I knew that was what you wanted."

Her lips part and he can hear the sigh of her breath; he can almost feel it.

He feels the pull of her closeness, and he leans in, smelling perfume and underneath that smelling her, which puts the perfume to shame. She leans in toward him as well, seeming just as drawn. She reaches out and touches his lips with just the tips of her fingers, so lightly he can barely feel it.

He closes his eyes, smelling her, breathing out against her skin.

He feels her lean nearer, and then her lips touch his cheek. The instant that it happens, his heart begins to pound and he feels like he's floating, or suddenly drunk. He wants to reach for her, but he doesn't.

He opens his eyes to find her looking at him, her eyes dark and intent.

She whispers, "You have more restraint than any man I've ever seen."

He smiles at her. "Maybe. I have a favor to ask, though."

"What's that?"

"Can we never do this again?"

She laughs. "I was thinking the same thing. Never take a wolf to a dog show and ask it to perform."

"Am I a wolf?"

"Yes. Like me." She touches his nose. "Perhaps we should go camping instead next time."

He thinks about having her all to himself in the midst of the wilderness, and blushes. "I can do that."

She studies him for a moment more, and he can see desire in her eyes. He can also see fear.

He says, "Goodnight, Natasha."

She sits back, relieved. "Goodnight, Bucky."

He climbs out of the car, heads up to his apartment, takes off his clothes, goes to bed. He jacks off hard, twice, and is finally able to sleep. In his dreams, he can still smell her skin.


	6. Exploration

They don't go camping, because neither of them are quite prepared to attempt (or pretend) to sleep next to each other. Particularly not in the mountains, where the autumn chill at night would make close contact even more desirable.

They do go hiking in Shenandoah Valley a couple of times. It's October, the weather is beautiful and gilt-edged leaves are just beginning to carpet the forest floor. Bucky has to force himself to step on them; instinct wants him to avoid noise at all costs, but this is a hike for fun, it's not a mission, and he's determined to behave at least somewhat as an ordinary man might behave. He notices that Natasha is also making a deliberate amount of noise moving through the brush, and he laughs.

"What?"

"We're both so determined to hike like normal people that we're probably scaring all the birds away."

She laughs, too.

They take turns blazing the trail. While she's in front, he watches her, and while she's behind him, he listens to her footsteps and her breathing. Natasha has made a hobby of identifying different kinds of lichen and moss, and she occasionally stops to point something out to him. She casually puts her hand on his shoulder several times. He still refrains from touching her on purpose, though he does offer her his hand on a few steep slopes. It's a throwback to behavior he hasn't felt the need for in subjective years: protectiveness, consideration. It's a tiny step toward becoming more human. Of course she doesn't need him to steady her and he knows it, but she takes his hand anyway, and it always makes him smile. He admires the feel of the strength in her arm as she carefully negotiates the rocks and tree roots. Every one of her steps is perfectly placed.

He camped often enough as a kid that he knows quite a few of the birds and trees around them, but not all of them. The wilderness he is most intimately acquainted with is in Europe, particularly Germany. Her area of expertise is Russia. In a way, they are both strangers to this land, introducing themselves to it and learning it as a friend.

They do other things over the course of a few weeks.

Museums are cool and often quiet, refuges from the streets outside. They go to a few of them, including the Smithsonian, which is a bit surreal for him at first. But he's able to tell her stories about the Howling Commandos. She doesn't talk about her past. He guesses that there are very few good things in it. He at least has the War to talk about, but the fact that his most positive life experiences happened during war doesn't demonstrate too healthy a past.

They both love the Museum of Natural History, particularly the dinosaurs. They go there more than once.

Since they go during weekdays, there are often organized groups of children from local schools wandering the exhibits. Bucky can remember a time when he loved children. Natasha watches them avidly, as though they are a species she can't quite identify. Once, he catches her with tears in her eyes as she watches a little girl try to touch the fang of a saber-toothed tiger skeleton before the teacher notices.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing I can talk about right now."

"Alright," he says simply.

She gives him a quick glance of gratitude, and then suggests lunch.

They never go to a fancy restaurant again, restricting their meals mostly to diners and street vendors and the occasional picnic. He pays for everything. She seems to sense that it will send him into a light panic if he doesn't. The small stipend he receives from SHIELD--Bucky refers to it as "let's keep you alive so we can study you" money--barely covers it, but he's good at stretching money. His needs are simple when he's alone.

They also go to the movies a few times. It turns out that they both enjoy love stories, perhaps because they both have the least experience with them. Horror movies are too close to their personal experiences to be enjoyable. They're either completely dull or else disquietingly familiar. And action films are so hilariously unrealistic that the pair's laughter and whispered criticism tend to distract the other film-goers. Comedy seems to be hit-or-miss.

Romantic films are interesting to both of them, though. She watches the film, mesmerized, as the main couple in the plot unite together and draw apart and then are drawn back together by fate as though every love match in the world were bound by a thick rubber band that can only stretch so far before it reinforces the resilience of the connection. He watches her, observing the way her eyes dilate at certain scenes, enjoying her occasional laughter or sighs. She knows he's watching, but it doesn't seem to bother her. That seems odd to him. He feels he would probably be uncomfortable if he knew someone was paying such close attention to his every expression and gesture; when he thinks about it, he tries to stop watching her, but his eyes always fall away from the screen and back to her face.

She finally mentions it. "Do you even know what happened in that movie?"

He sees no point in lying. "Not really. I think there was a part with a dog."

She smiles. "You were staring at me the whole time, weren't you?"

"I was."

"Am I that interesting?"

"You don't see me falling asleep, do you?"

The romance of the movies has its effect upon both of them; her from watching, him from experiencing the film vicariously in the reflection of her face. She occasionally takes his hand and squeezes it. A few times, she leans against his shoulder, which makes it difficult to watch her and also difficult to control his breathing, so he just closes his eyes during those times. They always stay until the final roll of the credits, enjoying the darkness around them as the other people leave the theater.

Once, perhaps hearkening to an older time in his life, he casually puts his arm around her shoulders. Immediately he realizes what he's done and he pulls it back hastily. She laughs softly, and takes his arm in her hands, letting her fingers curl over his bicep and stroke it gently as she lays her head on his shoulder once again. He tilts his head toward hers and buries his nose in her hair for a few seconds, relishing her scent and the fact that no part of her body appears to be recoiling from him.

He asks her later, "What is it like, touching me?"

"It's different."

"From what?"

"From touching anybody else. I've never touched anybody unless either I or they had an agenda behind it. You and I don't have any ulterior motives except wanting to touch each other. It's a different experience for me. I feel like I'm learning a new language."

"It _is_ a language, I think."

She moves closer, her voice dropping a little. "Then what are we saying to each other?"

He gazes into her eyes, lifts his right hand and caresses the air beside her cheek. She takes his hand and presses it lightly in, making contact. He strokes her cheekbone gently with the tip of his thumb and thinks, _Maybe there's a chance._

"It doesn't translate," he replies.

They still exchange very few words. For him, talking too much feels dangerous; for her, talking too much would be a game or a show. She only speaks to him when she wants to, which seems to be another new experience for her.

They still spar occasionally, and once, they even go to a baseball game together.

He can feel the bond between them tightening, just like the elastic band in so many of those romantic movies. He has begun to feel as though if she ever got too far away from him, he would be bodily pulled after her.


	7. Wreckage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This particular mission lasts two nights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this chapter; for some reason I'm experiencing a lot of confidence issues with this fic.

Nick Fury, for reasons of his own, hasn't given Natasha any assignments recently. Doubtless he knows about the budding relationship between her and Bucky, so Bucky wonders whether that's why. Could he really be that interesting to SHIELD that they would ground one of their finest operatives just to see how he behaves in her company?

The answer to that question comes soon enough in the form of a mission for her and the other Avengers. Bucky leaves a message with Steve, offering to come along and assist; an offer he knows will be refused, and it is. But he feels the need to offer, and not just because he knows he'll worry about Steve and Natasha while they're gone.

He knows better, he's seen both of them in action, hell, he's _fought_ both of them. They can take care of themselves. But he worries anyway. His worry for Steve is more a sense of loss than anything else, that Steve should be going somewhere and doing something without Bucky there to back him up. His worry about Natasha is far more wrenching and completely irrational in its intensity.

This particular mission lasts two nights.

It's peculiar because they haven't been spending every night together, but he feels the passage of those two nights without her like the weight of a glacier. He can't sleep, he can't even rest, he doesn't bother trying to eat. His skin feels too tight, his eyes and head hurt. He thinks about her being shot, being hit, stabbed, tortured, killed, and his fingers twitch and form fists before he can stop them. He tries to watch television and ends up staring at the wall instead. He paces. He goes to the gym and works out until his muscles shake. His jaw aches from clenching.

By the time the mission ends and they return, he's well on his way to being a wreck. Steve visits to let him know that they're back. When Steve walks in, his eyes go wide with shock.

"What the hell happened to you, pal?"

Bucky coughs self-consciously, feeling relief so vast that he breaks out in a tingling sweat. "I've had a little trouble sleeping."

Steve, who can see past the end of his nose, says, "She missed you, too."

Bucky blushes. "Did she?"

"You'd have to know her to notice, but yeah. She did."

"How did it go?"

"Well enough. Unfortunately I can't tell you much, Fury's been adamant about information security lately, which is funny considering the data dump we let loose last year, but there you go." Steve examines Bucky for a moment. "You should call her. And then sleep for about a day."

"What, call her now?"

"Or else send a carrier pigeon, because I know how you hate the phone."

Bucky grimaces; he does hate the phone. He hates talking on it, texting on it, and just about everything else on it. There's a game on there with cute cats, and that's about the only thing he likes. But to hear Natasha's voice again and know for sure that she's okay... "I'll call later."

Later that evening, after finally being able to eat something, he gets up his nerve (why is he so nervous?) and calls her.

"Hi there, soldier." He can't believe he's never noticed it before, but there's a warm tone in her voice that he only hears when she's talking to him.

"Natasha." It comes out as a sigh. "I want to see you." He blinks for a moment. He didn't mean to say that out loud.

"I'll be right over."

As soon as the line disconnects, he begins to panic. They've never visited each other at home. He hastily tidies up his apartment. It came furnished, which is good, because he never would have bought any furniture on his own. Left to himself, he'd sleep on a mattress on the floor and eat nothing but protein bars. There's not actually much to tidy up.

He takes a five-minute shower and puts on some clean clothes, just as he pulls on his shirt he hears her knocking at his door.

He opens it with his heart in his throat. This feels dangerous, her coming here. "Hi."

She looks as nervous as he feels, and he marvels that she's letting him read that off her so clearly. She steps inside hesitantly. "Hi."

He shuts the door as gently as possible, as though he's afraid of startling her. "How was your trip?"

"Surprisingly dull. May I sit down?"

"Sorry, of course." They sit.

She looks at her hands for a moment, and then up at him. "I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"You look a little tired."

He wonders whether to tell her the truth, and then remembers that she values him for being real. "I didn't sleep while you were gone."

She stares at him. "Bucky, I was gone for over sixty hours."

He shrugs. He can't explain it and there's no point in trying.

She stands up and holds out her hand. He gingerly takes it, and she pulls him up. "Come on. I take it the bedroom is this way?"

"Yes."

His mind is painfully blank as they walk down the hallway; he can't quite believe this is happening. He doesn't want to analyze what exactly actually _is_ happening. His dick is starting to get ideas though, and he breathes deeply in and out, trying to keep cool.

She pushes him down onto the bed, and then gets in next to him and lays a hand lightly on his chest. "Sleep."

He looks at her. "What will you do?"

"I'll take a nap myself. I didn't sleep much either, but that was because I was busy."

He thinks that it will be impossible to sleep, especially with her hand on his chest, but almost the moment he closes his eyes, he's out.

When he wakes, it's deep into the night. He can feel her hand on his chest still. His body feels like it's made of lead; he's not sure he can move, but he manages to turn his head a little, to look at her.

She's looking back at him, her eyes black in the darkness.

"Did you sleep?" he asks.

"No. I watched you."

He feels strange for a moment, and wonders whether he feels anxious or invaded, but he doesn't. There's actually something obscurely comforting about the idea of her watching him as he sleeps. "Did I snore?"

"No, but you murmured things in your sleep."

"Interesting. What did I say?"

She said softly in Russian, " _It's broken. Please, take it._ "

He furrowed his brow. "I wonder what I was talking about."

"You sounded worried."

"I guess I must have been. Breakable things don't last long around me."

She smirked. "Good thing I'm not breakable."

"Are you certain of that?"

"No."

He lifts one of his hands, raises it to his chest and lays it over her hand. She laces their fingers together, and the bed suddenly feels warm to him. His body is beginning to wake up, his muscles re-engaging. He turns on his side, toward her.

She says, "I want to take the next step." Her voice is quiet in the darkness.

"The next step toward what? Where are we going?" He realizes as soon as it leaves his mouth that it's an important question.

"I'm not sure." She frowns. "No, that's not right. It's more like, I know where I would like to go with you, and I'm not sure whether we can get there from here."

"And where is that?"

"Somewhere without fear."

He wishes he could kiss her. He thinks he still remembers how to kiss. "There's no such place."

She looks at him for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she pulls her hand away, and rolls herself up from the bed. "Then what am I doing here?" Her voice is weary.

He sits up, alarmed, but doesn't know how what kind of an answer to give her. There aren't any instructions for him... or for her, he realizes. "I'm not sure."

She looks at him, and then down at the carpet. "Right." She slips her shoes on and leaves.

He's so stunned he can't even move until he hears the door close. By the time he reaches it, she's gone.


	8. Isolate

They go days without speaking, and it feels like years. He doesn't see her around the compound or the gym, or any of their other recent haunts. She doesn't call him; he doesn't call her either, because what would he say? What would he say if they ran into each other in person? He has no idea how to fix this, or even what's broken. He has a sinking feeling that this was somehow inevitable from the beginning. It's no consolation.

He's barely sleeping or eating again, but more frightening to him is the look in his own eyes in the mirror: colder and more expressionless with every passing hour. He hadn't realized just how much she had called him back from the darkness. Now the darkness is claiming him again, and he's tempted to just give in.

But he's gotten into the habit of getting out of the apartment on an almost daily basis, so he continues to go out, to the park, to the woods, to the museums. Nothing really interests him, but it all reminds him of her. He can't tell whether he loves that or hates it.

More days pass, and he goes from anger to bewilderment to depression, and then into that black state that's worse than anything else. His mind goes utterly clinical. He can measure his own heartbeat.

One day, he decides to go see one of their movies again.

It's difficult to look at the rows of seats and select one where he'll be sitting by himself; he sits as quickly as possible and tries not to think about why he's doing this. The answer comes to him anyway: _Because this is the next best thing to being with her... pretending to be with her._

She's not there, so he actually pays attention to the movie this time.

It's a very basic story, almost comical in its simplicity. The couple meet through misadventure, they get to know each other through other misadventures, they fall in love, they fight, they make up. At the end, he finds himself squinting at the screen thinking, _That's it?_ All of their difficulties come from circumstances, and if there are internal issues, they're cute ones, like small phobias or personality quirks. There's no past history of mayhem and murder to muddy the waters.

Still, she was enchanted by the movie, and he wants to know why. So he makes a research project of it, renting and watching romantic comedies and dramas. He watches them with a critical eye and begins to note the patterns in them.

Each couple is perfect for each other, but outward circumstances or quirks of character somehow conceal that from both of them until the end.

He thinks about himself and Natasha, how he had envisioned a perfect lover for her, someone who could heal her and treat her the way she deserved to be treated. But then, did she want the same thing he had imagined for her? Who would be most compatible with an assassin?

Another assassin.

He's known from the beginning that they were warped mirror images of each other, but only now does it occur to him to wonder whether that makes them perfectly matched.

Then there's the inevitable fight. Often it seems to be about nothing at all, merely the two of them both being in a bad mood at the same time. Which isn't that far off from how his own fight with her went. He's still not sure what caused it, only that they were both tired at the time. Maybe tired from more than lack of sleep.

The fight is almost always solved by some kind of a grand romantic gesture, and here he finds himself stymied. It's been seventy years since he made a romantic gesture toward a woman, and those were all the smallest of tokens; a flower, a compliment. In the movies he watches, the grand romantic gestures are large, dramatic, and invariably extremely public. That's not like him. It's not like her, either.

One or both characters often makes a sacrifice of some sort. Something about the idea gives him cold chills. To him and Natasha, sacrifice means only one thing: bloodshed.

Or else one or both characters behave extremely out of character in order to win each other back. That felt like a more plausible possibility, but it also seemed like a bad idea. What were the chances that they would keep those changes in place, rather than just reverting back to their old selves after some time passed? The movies never address what happens after the happy ending.

The more films he watches, the more overly simplistic and overly complicated it all becomes.

One day, he wakes up with a pain in his chest, so deep and sharp that it worries him. He shakes himself, the residue of the dream escaping before he can capture it. All he can remember is that night, when Natasha told him that he talked in his sleep.

_"It's broken. Please, take it."_

_I can't be without her._

It's the simplest of thoughts, with the most difficult of meanings. He simply can't be, without her. He can't live this way. He can't go back to how things were before her.

An idea floats into his mind, and he grabs it before it can float away again.

He searches general stores and specialized boutiques for what he wants, and finally asks Steve's advice, who orders it for him online. It's a small heart, made of red glass.

When it arrives, Bucky carefully removes it from the package, and drops it casually on the table. It immediately shatters into three small pieces. He takes the pieces and glues them clumsily together, the cracks still apparent.

He writes on a single sheet of white paper, in Russian, _It's broken. Please, take it._

He wraps the paper around the badly joined heart, and leaves it on her doorstep one morning.


	9. Returning

That afternoon, he senses something and rises from his chair and goes to the door and opens it before she can even ring the bell. The sight of her knocks the wind out of him; he can't speak. He just gazes at her, and he can feel his heart turning from cold iron back into warm human muscle again, pumping warm human blood.

She looks at him with haunted eyes and says, "I can't give you what you want."

He shakes his head dumbly. "What is it that you think I want from you?"

"You want... my body. I can't give it to you. I'm too... it's too... I just can't. I can't." Her breath is tight, and her face is pale, and he can see that the days have been just as hard on her as they have been on him. Then she abruptly bursts into tears, the kind of racking sobs that tear their way through the body and leave bruises on their way out. There's something horrifying about such an open display of emotion from her.

He has no idea what to do. He can't touch her. "Natasha."

She shakes her head, covering her eyes with her hands.

On some faint instinct, he kneels before her. "Natasha. Look at me."

She can hear that his voice is coming from lower down, and she uncovers her eyes and sees him. "Wha-- what are you doing?"

"Pleading." He pauses. Words are difficult, more difficult than anything else, and she knows it. So maybe words will be enough. "I would be happy to just spend time with you. I would be happy to just hear your voice on the phone, or see your face in the morning. I would be happy just knowing that I'm going to see you again the next day, and the next. I would be happy to sleep with you watching over me. I would be happy to go into the woods with you, and see new things and new places with you, and hear you laugh. I would be happy to go and fight by your side. I would be happy to take a bullet for you, and die next to you, even if you didn't hold my hand. I would be happy for eternity then. Do you understand what I'm saying? The only thing in the world right now that could possibly make me unhappy is you refusing to see me."

At some point during the litany, her sobs quiet down to tiny jerks of her jaw and throat, and she begins to gaze at him just a little bit like the way he's gazing at her. When he's finished, she says, "You can't possibly love me that much."

"Try me."

She drops to her knees, facing him, and takes his hands in hers. She kisses them, one flesh hand and one metal, and he can feel her tears on his skin. She says, "I can't explain what it's like. I feel like I'm going insane when I'm with you, sometimes. I want you so badly, but then my body just... turns off, like a faucet. I get so frustrated, and I feel bad for you, because your body is behaving normally..."

He cups her face in his hands. "You're so hard on yourself. If I can be patient, why can't you?"

"You don't understand, Bucky. It might _never_ happen."

He shakes his head. "I don't care."

"It would be completely abnormal!"

"I don't care."

"You would be giving up your chance at a sex life, and I would be depriving you of--"

"Natasha! Stop. Please." He takes a deep breath. "I love you, and all I'm asking is that you let me."

She sniffs and looks into his eyes. "I wish I could kiss you right now."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"No."

"Then it can wait. I can wait. You can wait." He can feel her trembling, and a powerful swell of feeling engulfs him and shakes him and makes him want to move the entire planet if it will comfort her. And the feeling hurts, but the pain feels good. It feels so much better than the dark emptiness that has been attempting to consume him for days.

He coaxes her to finally sit inside with him, and they talk about small, familiar, comfortable things, like semi-automatic weaponry and their shared dislike of modern music. Paradoxically, she seems almost frantically drawn to touching him again and again, until she's nearly in his lap. He asks whether he can hold her, and she assents, and for the first time, he holds her in his arms, and he realizes that he can do it very gently.

He invites her to stay, and they fall asleep holding hands. Just before dropping off, she admits to loving him in return.


	10. Accord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They start by sleeping together, always chastely clothed, often holding hands.

Somehow, that massive snarling beast of lust in his body has quieted. Something else has taken its place. He still wants her, but more than that, he wants her to be okay; and much of the time, he realizes, she's not. He studies her with his assassin's eyes, and he can see the damage now. It's rooted deep.

They take an agreed-upon break--he willingly, she begrudingly--from some of the impromptu touch therapy they've been trying so hard to push through. No more sparring that turns into heavy flirting. But she remains adamant that she wants to be physical with him in some small ways. He asks her why.

"Because at times it feels good, and I've never had those kind of touches feel good before."

So he cautiously agrees, and they begin to take small steps. Their progress is interrupted by Natasha's work, and occasionally by Bucky getting called into SHIELD for interviews and examinations--he never knows exactly what they're for--but he and she manage to meet up a couple of days a week.

They start by sleeping together, always chastely clothed, often holding hands. Her body's tendency to lock up is worse when she's sleepy, as is her emotional state. Sleep represents danger, weakness. She has trouble sleeping next to someone. Often she'll startle herself awake from a dead sleep, waking him up--his own senses and instincts keep him from sleeping too deeply as well. He whispers her name in the darkness, feeling her heartbeat thrumming rapidly in her wrist. She answers, and tries to relax again. Sometimes they talk a little. He always waits for her to fall asleep again before he sleeps himself.

One night, she says it again, and this time, he knows the only reason she's saying it is to see what he'll do. "Touch me."

He's almost angry, and then he decides not to be. "No. You touch me."

She blinks in surprise for a moment, and then slowly smiles. "Where?"

He refuses to be baited. "My face."

She leans over him and touches his cheek with one gentle, graceful fingertip that slowly caresses its way down to his jaw, pushing against his stubble as she rounds his chin. She touches his lips, softly. He keeps them very still, simply breathing in and out, letting her do as she pleases. She touches his nose, and his eyebrows; she rubs a small circle into his temple. Then she threads her fingers with his hair, sending tingles from his scalp to his feet.

He watches her closely, his senses dialed to eleven, and when he sees it... a tiny tightening of her eyes, a wince at the side of her mouth... he says, "Stop."

He says it because he knows that she won't, otherwise. And he's starting to figure out why that is. She's spent her entire life forcing herself to touch and be touched. She no longer knows where her own limits are, she can't feel the line between what she wants and what she's being compelled to do. He has to sense it for her.

She frowns. "Did I do something wrong?"

He smiles. "No."

She falls back onto the bed and looks at the ceiling for a moment. "This is going to take forever." She looks at him. "Why do you want me again?"

"Because you have my heart."

She reaches down between her breasts and pulls out a small leather pouch, knotted onto a cord around her neck. She opens it and shakes out what's inside: the small, red, badly-repaired heart. "Sure you don't want it back?"

"It's in safer hands with you."

She twirls it gently in her fingers, and then drops it safely back into the pouch. She tucks it away, warm against her skin, and he can almost feel what it must be like, cradled between the softness of her breasts, surrounded by her smell.

_Stop that._

He turns on his side to look at her, letting that be enough for now.

She says, "You were talking in your sleep again last night."

"What did I say?"

She says, in Russian, " _I need to stay here._ "

"I don't know what that means."

"I suppose you'd better stick around and find out." She smiles.


	11. Guard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you trust me?"

She waits until he's become accustomed to them sleeping together almost every free night they have, and then she finally brings it up.

"Do you trust me?"

He turns to her, surprised. "Yes."

"Then why do you feel the need to sleep with so many weapons?"

He tenses. "What do you mean?"

It's the wrong thing to say. She looks him dead in the eye for a moment, and then says, "Tell me that was your attempt at a joke."

Of course she knows how many pieces he's wearing. It's her job. More than her job, it's her life. He says, "Sorry. Don't think that it's about you."

"I know it's not about me, but at some point, we may start losing clothes when we're together. I'd like the sharp edges and ballistics to go first. Besides that, I don't want to always have to ask you if that's a gun in your pocket or you're happy to see me." Her eyes twinkle, but he can feel the weight of her seriousness.

He has to think about this for a few moments. But suddenly it feels like it's too hot in the room. He sits up and tugs at his collar, which feels like it's touching his neck in an oddly invasive way. In fact, it's nearly strangling him. He clears his throat. It's hard to breathe, with his collar so tight. His skin is prickling all over; and now it's gone from hot to cold...

She says, "James Buchanan Barnes, if I didn't know you better, I would say that you're panicking."

He knows that she's right, and he tries to make it stop, which only makes it worse. He gets up and starts pacing around the bed.

"Talk to me," she says softly.

He paces back and forth a few times, struggling to find words. Finally, he says, "I never take them off."

"You have to take them off sometimes. You have to shower."

He tugs at his collar again. Now his sleeves feel tight. "I shower quickly and I keep a knife in the soap cradle."

"You... seriously?"

"Why would I joke about something like that?"

The next obvious question is, _What is it that you think is going to happen?_ but she doesn't ask that, and he's grateful for it. There is a long list of things that he expects to happen to him at any given moment, most of which are low on the likelihood index, but all of which are possible. His life has proven to him how possible they are. Instead, she says, "Have you considered that you're safer when I'm with you?"

He pauses, surprised. "No, but I should."

"It's not likely that anybody would be able to get the better of both of us when we're together."

"True."

"Come here. You're making me dizzy."

"I think I may need to keep pacing."

She smiles. "Bucky, I'm not going to force you to disarm. You can come sit down again."

His breath feels tight. "But I _ought_ to be able to do that for you."

"Now why does that sound familiar?"

He closes his eyes, pressing his temples with his fingers and trying to breathe evenly. She's right; he's doing the exact same thing that she's been doing. _If a normal human being can do it, why can't I? Because I'm not normal. It's that simple. And that complicated._ His entire body feels keyed up, as though he's prepared for a fight.

She says, "How about a walk around the block?"

"At night?"

"Why not?"

It's impossible for him to sit down, and he realizes that she knows that. "A walk would be good."

They walk around the block four times before his heart finally stops racing, and all he has to do is think about sleeping truly naked to feel the panic rising again. _I can't do that. I can't._

She takes his hand as they walk. "I understand how you feel."

He nods, squeezing her hand gently. "Yes, you do, don't you?"

"I wonder if we're too fucked up to be together."

He stops, keeping hold of her hand so that she has to stop as well. He looks into her eyes. "Say that again and I may have to hurt you."

She smiles and reaches up to touch his cheek. "That's sweet, but save the foreplay for the bedroom."

He returns her smile, and wonders how in the hell he got so lucky.


	12. Dismantle

They take turns.

One night, they'll sit together on the bed, and she'll hold out her hands, and he'll pull out a weapon and give it to her. She places it on the small table next to the bed, takes his hand, and pulls him down beside her. It usually takes his breathing a little while to slow down, but after a few weeks, it starts to become easy. Then she asks him to hand her two at a time. It becomes difficult again... and slowly easier. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to give her all of them. That seems impossible. But there's a subtle kind of eroticism in this form of surrender that he offers her, something intimate and affecting about it. It's as though he's putting his life into her hands.

Other nights, he doesn't do this. Instead, she touches him, gradually exploring his body until she has it memorized, at least beneath clothing, save a button unfastened here or a sleeve pushed up there. His face, head, shoulders, chest, arms, legs--every part of him but the tacitly forbidden area at the front of his pants. These nights are a sweet torment for him, and he senses they are for her as well; he always has to stop her long before he wants her to stop, detecting those tiny signals that say that she's had enough. As time passes, she gets to know her own limits, and he doesn't have to be quite so watchful. He can simply enjoy (or endure with baited breath and an erection he knows is probably visible) her touching him.

As time passes, she mixes it up a little.

One night several weeks in, she takes his right hand and begins to touch her own face with it. His eyes widen, but he lets it happen, half enjoying and half agonizing over the way her skin feels against his fingertips, the softness of her cheek resting on the roughness of his palm. She pauses there, and they exchange a long look.

"I want to try something you may find to be... cruel," she says.

"Do it," he breathes.

She kisses his hand gently, and then takes it and slides it down the side of her neck. He allows his fingers to glide along her skin, moving with its valleys and rises, until he realizes what she's doing and he has to struggle to breathe as his hand rests on her breast.

" _Is it too much?_ " she asks him in Russian.

He swallows hard. "I... I can do this, but please don't ask me to talk."

She closes her eyes and her hand tightens on his, encouraging him to compress his fingers, but gently, so gently cupping and feeling her breast, sliding his thumb tip over her nipple which is actually hardening, it's hardening and his breath is rushing in and out of him like a bellows. She moves his hand to her other breast, and he closes his eyes tightly and his breath is nearly a whimper now as her other nipple hardens against his skin.

"Bucky, look at me."

He opens his eyes and looks at her. Her eyelids are heavy and her lips are parted, and there's a slight flush in her cheeks and on the skin just below her neck. She's aroused, he can see it, he can nearly _smell_ it, and he desperately tries to remember why he's not supposed to touch her.

She looks worried suddenly, and he remembers. It chills him from head to foot and he's able to carefully extricate his hand and pull it back. He opens his mouth, but it's too dry for him to speak. He closes it, and tries again. "Are you okay?"

She nods. "Are you?"

He nods, not quite trusting himself to put how he's feeling into words.

She glances at his groin and smirks a little.

He shrugs. "I guess I don't have to tell you how amazing you felt."

"You don't. There's a favor you can do me, though, if you're up to it."

"What's that?"

She lays down beside him, very close. "I want you to get yourself off, right now."

He stares at her. "I... you... what?" His dick is throbbing appreciatively at the idea, but his mind is utterly baffled.

She leans in and places her mouth by his ear and breathes warm air across it, and says in a low murmur, "I think you want to, and I know I'll enjoy watching."

"Are you sure?" He can't believe this is happening.

"Do it."

He hesitates, until she finally takes his hand and lowers it down and uses it to trace the outline of his cock through his pants. That's all it takes; he starts to undo his belt and his pants, and pushes down the hem of his underwear to draw out his cock. He can feel himself blushing deep red as he begins to stroke himself. His shyness is almost enough to cause his erection to flag, but then he remembers the feel of her breast, and he closes his eyes and loses himself.

She keeps up a steady stream of whispering in his ear... "That's right... just like that... what are you thinking about, my mouth? My breasts? Are you wondering how it would feel if I were on top of you right now?... Bucky, I want to watch you come... I've been wanting to see it for ages... I want to be here with you when it happens, this close to you..."

He gasps for breath and keeps up a steady rhythm, and it's not going to take long, no, not long at all. Not with her so close, breathing words in his ear. Not with her smell surrounding him like a dizzying perfume.

"Tell me when you get close," she whispers.

"I'm... I'm..."

She kisses him.

For an instant he's in shock, and then his orgasm rises up out of nowhere and engulfs him. He moans into her mouth as it thrums through his body like the pounding of a bass drum, echoing again and again.

There's a slightly awkward moment afterward where he tries to combine cleaning himself up and checking on her, but she smiles and tells him that she's fine, and he decides to believe her, because his ears are ringing and his eyes are sleepy and nothing seems to matter except sinking into the bed and going to sleep.

As he's dropping off, she says, "I want to kiss you again."

"Please wait until I'm awake tomorrow and I can say no and make it sound believable."

She laughs.


	13. Floodgates

That night opens up a whole new world to both of them. She's realized that they can be sexual with each other and enjoy it without necessarily undergoing full bodily contact, and he's realized that she's capable of more intimacy than he suspected.

Months of sexual restraint give way like the sudden breaching of a dam.

Night after night, she watches him pleasure himself, or he watches her, or both, sometimes at the same time. He quickly discovers that while touch is still an issue for her, she _loves_ to be watched. And he's quickly developing a taste for it, too. Her eyes almost feel like hands on him, and the vulnerability of doing something so private for an audience is somehow addictive.

They both push off further work on their respective issues, since that's not nearly as much fun as what they're doing now. But somehow the work continues.

For instance, it's more fun to engage in coupled masturbation when there are fewer clothes involved. So he's obligated to wear fewer and fewer weapons as he gradually sheds his clothing more and more, and the closer he gets to completion each time, the more impatient he gets with the restraint of covering himself. What they couldn't accomplish with practice is being quickly taken care of with orgasms. He's disarming himself.

She shows him the multiplicity of ways she has of getting herself off, sometimes using massagers and other toys, and he's utterly fascinated. One night, he asks her if he can use one of her toys on her, without touching her skin, and she agrees. He goes slowly, almost too slowly and too gently, and her impatience soon outstrips her nervousness and she begins to beg him to go faster. The sound of her voice beseeching him is enough to make him break out into a hot sweat, and he complies, using his quickly growing skills to carry her into her own bliss as she shivers and moans. Later, he shyly asks if he can try again, and she laughingly says, "Oh, if you must." This time, he tries to bring her to the edge and hold her there, listening and watching to see how close she is, waiting for the desperate tone in her voice again. He succeeds past his expectations and by the time he finally allows her to come, she's an overheated, sweating, quivering mess. He's never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

Another night, facing each other and deep in the throes of their separate yet mutual passions, he comes so hard that a few droplets hit her belly. When he recovers, he hastily apologizes, but she simply smiles at him, wipes away one of the drops with her fingers, and licks it off them. He suffers a small post-orgasmic spasm that nearly hurts.

Sex is highly chemical, and so they become each other's intoxication. Drugged with pleasure, they get closer and closer to touching, so that when it finally happens, they slide into it as easily as a hot bath.

The first night she uses her hands on him, it's almost anti-climactic except for the event of his own climax, which hits him hard enough to lock up the muscles in his stomach. She kisses him sweetly as he tries to recover his thoughts and he says something that he doesn't even remember later, but he remembers the amazed look in her eyes after he says it.

And then comes the first night that she asks him, "Can I use your hand?"

He swallows hard and nods, his erection firm and aching in an instant.

She hesitantly takes his right hand (they haven't used his metal one yet, though she's explored it with her touch on other nights) and uses it first to hold and stroke her breasts. He keeps his fingers loose and biddable to her pressures and guidance, only occasionally permitting them the luxury of a deliberate touch, lighter and more subtle than he could have imagined himself capable of several months ago. But she's been teaching him a different way to touch, even if only by example with her own deft hands.

She slowly slides the palm of his hand down her chest and belly, and he involuntarily groans when she finally guides his fingers around and into the slight mound of her pussy. She's unbearably soft and he lets his hand lie relaxed as she shows him through her skilled fingertips how to touch her. His breath grows heavy and hard as his hand is moved by her, warmth enclosing his fingers as she invites him in. She clenches around his fingertips and he feels like he's breathing her sweat rather than the air. He can almost taste her.

For the first time, he can feel her body's pleasure rather than just seeing it, he can feel her growing wet and ready, can feel the flutter of her muscles against his skin and the way her clit swells, and he never wants this to end, and neither does she if the unhurried pulse of her unspoken guidance is any clue. She takes her time, keeping her eyes closed and focusing inward, using him to pleasure herself until he feels like his entire body is being swallowed up by her in slow, hot waves. He can't breathe and he's sweating and trying not to writhe against the bed as his hand remains trapped against and inside her body.

She throws her head back suddenly and gasps, "Now! Hard!" And she presses his hand in and begins to shift it back and forth rapidly, more firmly than he would have guessed would be welcome, and he complies and engages his arm so that the heel of his hand is rubbing her and his fingers are fucking her hard and steadily. He can almost see the haze of heat rising from her body. All he can feel is helpless now, helplessly watching her and unable to tear his eyes away, helplessly fucking her with his hand and unable to stop, helpless as his own mind takes the feel of her clenching sex and transposes it to his dick until he's leaking thick, eager drops.

She finally comes, bucking hard against his hand and the bed and cursing, squeezing his fingers and suddenly rippling around them in quick pulses. His gut clenches and spasms and he grunts as his own gentler orgasm releases, but he never stops watching her, spellbound and rapt at the way her body is tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing.

When she finishes, he hesitantly pulls his hand away, not sure what to do next. He pulls his hand up to his face and takes a deep breath of her scent, moaning as the hard instinctive response to it travels all the way down his spine. He wipes his hand on his shirt, privately intending to keep the shirt around for the times when she's not there in the future...

She whispers, "Kiss me."

He's never kissed her. Not on his own. She's only kissed him so far.

He leans over her and touches her face, his throat locked up tight, and he kisses her soft, swollen lips, just once. Once is as much as he can handle. He falls back on the bed and closes his eyes, recovering.

Several minutes pass and she shakes off the lassitude and goes to the bathroom, and he cleans himself up a bit and changes his pants, and when she returns, fully dressed, he senses that something is wrong. She gets back into bed hesitantly, almost anxiously, and there's a look in her eyes that he doesn't like at all. A fearful look.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Please don't lie. You don't have to tell me what it is, but don't lie about it."

She sighs, and half-laughs. "I feel strange. I'm not sure why." Her voice is higher than usual, almost child-like.

He sits up beside her. "How can I help?"

"I don't know."

He frowns, thinking hard, and comes up blank. She's looking worse and worse, her skin growing pale as she closes in on herself, and she draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them.

He thinks of something, and immediately dismisses it as stupid. But he considers it again.

"Hold out your hand," he says softly.

She slowly extends a hand toward him. It's shaking.

He pulls from the back of his belt, and places into her hand, an Emerson folding Karambit knife.

She looks at it in bafflement for a moment, and then suddenly laughs a short, quiet laugh, her voice deepening into something much more adult and dangerous than the high, childish tone she had before. She lowers her knees, sitting cross-legged, and holds the knife in both hands. She unfolds the blade. "Nice."

"It's my favorite."

"I can see why." She hefts it. "I can only imagine the kind of damage you'd be able to do with this, to the right target. Or the wrong one."

"Does holding it make you feel safer?"

She blinks at him for a moment. "Yes."

He nods. "Then keep it."

She frowns. "I can't, it's your favorite."

He smiles. "Keep it. You can give it back to me when you don't need it anymore."

She hesitates for a moment, and then nods.

He sits with her while she passes the knife from hand to hand, twisting and turning it, experimenting with the balance of it, with the way her hand fits the grip. Her body visibly relaxes as the moments pass. Then she puts the knife away, tucking it into her shirt, and smiles at him.

He feels absolutely and perfectly content, and he hopes like hell that she does, too.


	14. Interfere

Their sexual idyll is interrupted by a long mission; two weeks.

Two weeks without her.

He gets through the first three days without her, he's not quite sure how. By day three, he's nearly sweating blood and his mind is going back to that dark place again, the place where there is no breath or life. He feels how powerful that thick elastic band has grown, now. It's pulling the heart right out of him, seeking wherever it is that she's gone.

On day 4, he wakes up, gets dressed, arms himself, and leaves to go find her.

It takes a couple of days of legwork. Nothing he can't handle. SHIELD has been cleaning up Hydra, mostly going by information that he's given them, so there's nowhere that she would have been sent that he's not intimately familiar with. He's their map, and he knows she's on it somewhere. All he really has to do is figure out what Hydra bases would warrant a two-week incursion. There aren't many. Most of them are in Russia.

A normal man might have simply asked her where she was going. And a normal woman might simply have told him. But neither of them fall into that category. Asking her to reveal her secrets would be a violation beyond even the physical; he would be asking her to betray her reason for living. Tracking her down is different, somehow; she wouldn't be responsible for that.

So he pays Hydra a visit. Which means traveling, but he's an expert at finding his way around. He considers his options, and then borrows the private jet of a local plutocrat. He fully intends to bring it back when he's done with it.

One Hydra base has been destroyed already; he views the desolation with a certain satisfaction. SHIELD did a good job. Another base he visits is still untouched, and he leaves it that way. Fury hasn't tasked him with fighting Hydra. It's not his business. His business is finding her.

He finds her at the third base he visits, a vast installation, barracks surrounding a fortress filled with laboratories. Nobody seems to be particularly alerted to trouble, so he hangs back, merely a shadow in the darkness of the surrounding landscape at night, and he slowly, meticulously searches the area until he's circling several miles out. He begins to see evidence that humans have touched the undergrowth, and that's when he nearly runs right into her. Because she knows someone is snooping around, and she's investigating it, because that's her job.

It's her scent that alerts him. No normal man could have smelled it, she's not wearing perfume, and her skin is largely covered. But his senses are enhanced, and he would recognize the scent of her through a windstorm in Siberia. It sets the skin on the back of his neck tingling, and his heart begins to pound so hard that he fears she'll hear it before he has a chance to announce himself.

"It's me," he whispers.

He can feel her shock, though she's ten feet away. She straightens, her eyes hard. "What are you doing here." It's not precisely a question, more an accusation. He is not welcome here.

"Absolutely nothing," he says quietly.

He waits until he can see her detect his full meaning; he's not there to interfere. He's not there to help, or to hinder, or even to watch, not really. He's simply there because she is. Because he can't be, without her near him.

She says, her voice a touch warmer, "Most men send flowers, you know."

"I wasn't sure what kind you like."

"Peruvian lilies are nice."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Bucky..."

He watches her consider things to say and discard them one by one. _You can't be here..._ obviously untrue, because he is. _There will be trouble for this..._ he doesn't care about that, and he suspects she doesn't really, either. _I have to tell Fury about this..._ no, she doesn't, and she won't.

He waits.

"Bucky, you'll distract me."

He considers this for a moment. "No I won't. You're better than that."

"What will I tell the others? They'll know that I found something."

"No they won't."

She comes over to him and touches his face. "What is it you think you're doing here?"

He remembers a past night and says, in Russian, " _I need to stay here._ "

He eyes soften, and he knows that she remembers, too. "Promise me you'll stay out of the way."

"You won't even know I'm here."

"I'll know you're here." Her voice says it so silkily that he desperately wants to kiss her and feel the skill in her tongue, but as he leans in, she stops him. "No. If you kiss me, I _will_ get distracted. Really."

He nods reluctantly. "If anything bad happens to you, I can't promise I won't intervene."

"I suspected as much. I have to go now." She disappears into the darkness.

His ears strain, but he can barely hear her go. His entire body feels warm, and he realizes that she's had the same effect on him that she had before: he feels real and human again.

He hovers in a wide perimeter around the concealed SHIELD forces, and later in a wide perimeter around the Hydra base as SHIELD closes in. He doesn't interfere. He suffers a few moments of panic when she's out of sight, deep within the compound, but quickly recovers and remembers: she still has his favorite knife. He wonders if she's going to gut anybody with it.

The thought makes him smile.


	15. Confront

Of course there is a reckoning, and not just for the stolen jet (which he really did intend to return). Bucky has been just barely kept above the level of persona non grata by Fury's maneuvering, and as such, his movements have been restricted and watched. He can't disappear for a week without Fury having to answer questions that would probably best not be answered.

Sitting in Fury's office, eye to eye with him, Bucky tries to regret what he did. He can't. He doesn't.

Fury seems to sense that losing his temper won't do either of them any good. He moves in front of his desk, crossing his arms over his chest, and examines Bucky closely. "You've left me in an awkward position. Now I have to figure out what to do with you, and it has to be something that the government will approve. At the moment, my options are to imprison you, put a tracer on you, or hand you over for what will probably be termination. The first option and the last one are hardly attractive. And you'd find and disable any tracer we could possibly attach to you."

Bucky sits quietly, listening.

"Do you have any statement to make on your own behalf, Barnes?"

"No."

"No word of explanation?"

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. He had given Fury more credit than that. "Do you really need one?"

"Well, my observations over the past few months give me a few clues, but it would still be nice if you would pretend for a moment that you care whether you live or die. Do you?"

Bucky sighs. "I do, and it wasn't my intention to cause trouble."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so is the road to a federal penitentiary. You're going to have to do better than that."

"What do you want me to say?"

Fury's eyes are colder than ice. "I want you to say that you'll never do anything so stupid as to follow Agent Romanov into combat, ever again."

"I can't say that."

"She doesn't need your protection, Barnes."

"I know that."

"Then why are we sitting here?"

Bucky looks at his hands for a moment, and then back up at Fury. "I have to be near her. She... keeps me alive."

They sit in silence for a full minute while Fury considers this. Bucky looks at his hands, resting on his knees. Lethal hands. He wishes violently for a second that he was someone else; _anybody_ else in the world other than himself.

When he looks up, he's surprised to see sympathy in Fury's eyes.

Fury says, "You don't have very many reasons to stay alive, do you?"

Without hesitation, Bucky says, "I have two. Steve and Natasha."

"Who also happen to be my right and left hand at the moment."

"I know that."

"Sergeant Barnes, I can't keep them grounded. And I can't send you out with them yet."

Bucky blinks. "Yet?"

"You're not stable enough. This latest episode of... delinquency... on your part has set us back a great deal in declaring you stable at all. If it weren't for the fact that I've been receiving remarkably positive feedback from your analysts recently, I'd be tempted to give up on you."

"Positive feedback?"

"Yes. The doctors say you've been happier, more active, more engaged. Mentally much healthier than you were when we first got you back."

Bucky feels a momentary sense of violation. Apparently all those tests were for a purpose after all. But... "There's a reason for that."

"And it may not be the reason you think. Has it occurred to you that, in addition to any other benefits, being with Agent Romanov has actually given you something to _do_?"

Bucky considers this for a moment.

"And has it occurred to you that at least half your distress when she is gone is due to the fact that you have too much time on your hands?" Fury returns to the other side of his desk and picks up a table, examining something on it.

Bucky squints. Boredom doesn't really seem to explain what happens to him when Natasha isn't around. Then again... "Where are you going with this?"

"Work, Sergeant Barnes. I'm going to put you to work, and I suggest you cooperate for your own good as well as the good you might do for me."

The idea is intriguing. "I thought you just said I wasn't stable enough."

"Not for hunting down Hydra. But you might be just fine for some other little jobs I need done. A little light housekeeping." He picks up a green folder and hands it to Bucky.

Bucky opens the folder. Inside is a dossier on a local politician; bio stats, habits, hangouts, family, friends.

Fury says, "I want you to shadow this man. He keeps pretty regular work hours, so I want him followed any time that isn't 9 to 5."

Bucky considers whether he wants to do this, and finds that the answer is, _Why the hell not?_ "For how long?"

"A month or so. Report back on all of his doings on this phone, which goes straight to me. I want you to call me every morning with a basic report, and call me any time night or day if he does anything specifically interesting." Fury hands Bucky a small, sleek phone. "Press your thumb against the bottom button to unlock it."

Bucky thumbs the button, and the phone lights up. There's an icon labeled "Fury". No need to even look into the contacts for it. He looks up. "So what's interesting?"

"You've been a spy for longer than I've been alive, Barnes. Figure it out. Now I want you out of my office and I don't want to have to see your face again until I summon you. If I have to mop up after any more problems, you may never see Romanov again. Are we clear?"

"Crystal."

"Goodbye."


	16. Active

The first time he reunites with Natasha after her mission, she cautiously suggests oral sex, and he cautiously agrees. They experiment all afternoon.

Her mouth on his body is skilled, and she goes slowly, slowly enough to almost drive him mad, leaving him panting and cursing and calling out to a God he could have sworn he had lost all faith in years ago. Then she hastens, and he's completely lost in sensation as she draws pleasure out of him like the sweat that gathers on his skin. When he's aware of himself again, he checks to make sure she's okay, but her eyes are laughing.

His experience isn't equal to hers, but his worshipful exploration of her body gets rapid results, and he feels warm inside to know that it's not his skill but rather himself that turns her on. Nobody else could touch her this way and get this kind of a response. This is his domain alone. He goes slowly as well, for a different reason; he's constantly checking his progress to make sure that she's still intact, but she begs him to go on and on until his jaws are aching and his tongue is sore and she's quivering out her ecstasy against his breath.

It leaves her a little shaken.

"Are you okay?" He takes her hand and squeezes it gently.

"I'm not sure. That was... intense. It's always so intense, when I'm with you." Her eyes are closed, her cheeks flushed.

"Different from how it is with anybody else?"

She opens her eyes and looks at him, with a small smile. "I wouldn't know. I've never had an orgasm with anybody else."

He's stunned. "Really?"

"Really. I can come by myself, obviously, but that's... very different from what I feel with you."

He kisses her hand. "I'm honored."

She sits up and gazes at him with curiosity. "What do you see, when you look at me?"

He thinks about the question for a moment, his eyes searching for the answer. He's not sure she'll like the answer he has to give. "Pain."

She tilts her head. "Pain?"

"It's like a bank of clouds. And then you smile, or touch me, and it's like the sun breaking through." It makes more sense inside his mind than it does in words.

She hesitates, and then nods. "I guess it can be hard to see through."

"Yes, but I know you're there."

"How?"

He caresses the air around her face. "Faith, I guess."

She catches his hand and presses it against her cheek. "It's nearly three. You should get some sleep before five."

He nods. "Kiss me goodnight?"

She does.

He leaves her reluctantly, but working is a small enough price to pay for his life, so he goes.

He prepares himself to be bored stiff while following Rep. Harold Pincer, and is surprised to find himself enjoying the job. It's the first time he's felt a sense of purpose in quite some time. It's the first time he's had that same sense of purpose with his own consent since the 1940s.

Harold Pincer seems fairly normal at first, and then Bucky begins to notice things that strike him as odd. For one thing, Pincer has three cars and never drives any of them. When he goes out, he walks or takes the bus or a cab. For another thing, when Pincer isn't at work, he stays armed. Bucky can tell by the way he holds himself. His posture and stance speak loudly that he's carrying a gun and that he's not comfortable with it.

Then there's the house; a normal-seeming brownstone tucked in the corner of an affluent street, but the security system equipped on the windows and doors is top-notch and highly sensitive. Bucky tests it the first night. A single thrown pebble against the glass sets it off, and Pincer has all the lights on and is looking out the window, clearly alarmed, within moments. Pincer allows the police to come and poke around a bit. Bucky stays in the shadows, nothing more than a shadow himself, completely invisible to interrogating eyes, until they decide it's safe to go. And then he continues to watch.

Pincer doesn't seem to sleep much either; he keeps a dim light on at all times in the hallway and frequently gets up in the night.

The real reveal happens the day that Pincer receives a package in the mail; obviously an unexpected package, because he jumps nearly a foot in the air when he opens the door to find it on the doorstep. He immediately slams the door shut and doesn't come back out for another hour. When he finally emerges, he steps carefully over the box and then leaves it there behind him, and goes to work as usual. When he comes home, with excruciating care, he throws it away.

Bucky calls Fury.

"Report."

"The subject seems sure that he's a potential assassination target."

"Interesting."

"Is he right? Should I be on the lookout for unwanted guests?"

"With any luck, we're in the process of taking out anybody who might endanger him. But this is good news."

"How so?"

"He's one of Hydra's most prolific informants. The fact that he's nervous means he gave us good intel."

"How much longer should I shadow him?"

"Stay on him for two more days and report back."

"Wilco."

The remaining days don't reveal anything that Bucky hasn't already noticed, so he confirms with Fury that there's nothing new to report. Fury loses no time in giving him a new assignment: another stakeout, this time on a woman named Marcia Heicht. She has a shifting schedule, which makes it all but impossible to see Natasha; he worries, but Natasha takes it easily in stride.

He has to resort to calling her again. "I can't see you this week."

"That's alright."

"You're not upset?"

"Why would I be? I know I'll see you soon. I know you're mine."

The words echo through his body and leave an indelible mark on him. _Hers._ It feels like a net. Not the kind that traps you, but the kind that keeps you from falling to your death. With four words, she has made the waiting sweet for him.


	17. Armistice

Armistice

 

Weeks pass. Bucky works, so does Natasha. She even goes on missions, and he, for a wonder, doesn't lose his mind or go after her. But they always make a point of seeing each other when she returns from a long absence, and usually, he greets her with Peruvian lilies.

And that becomes life. No longer waiting for something to happen, but simply enjoying what is already happening to them.

Which is what makes it so surprising when it finally happens.

She walks through the doorway and kisses him, and he feels a shock at how easy it is. It seems perfectly natural and normal. He puts his arms around her and she presses her body against his and whispers, "It's time."

"For what?" He's already breathless with the closeness of her, the intimacy of touching her this way, in a way that most couples would take for granted.

"Come with me."

Once in the bedroom, she dims the light slightly and then comes to him. She reaches toward his face and gently caresses the air beside his cheek, and they both smile. He asks, "Where does it hurt today?"

"Nowhere. Yet." She moves closer, unbuckling his belt, and he feels her pulling it slowly, easing it off him. She pauses and pulls a holster off the belt. Then a knife. His chest tightens as he realizes what she's doing.

_It's time._

She doesn't go for his clothing immediately. She goes for his weapons, slowly finding them, one by one, and one by one removing them. For months she's been touching him, exploring his body, and only now does he realize that she knows exactly where he keeps everything. She's been researching his hiding places, all this time. He wants, for an instant, to feel upset... but he can't. He loves her for knowing him this well.

Slowly, she disarms him. He feels lightheaded as it happens, her hands reaching and seeking and finding all of his secrets, all of his false safety. She's offering him the opportunity to trust her. He closes his eyes, his head bowing slightly as he feels his armor dissolving beneath her touch. When she tugs lightly at his clothing, he removes it piece by piece under her guidance; finally he realizes that she's stripped him completely, of both weaponry and clothes, and he's more than naked in front of her.

He can't quite catch his breath. Somewhere in the process his cock hardened, and it's nearly aching now.

"How does it feel?" she asks quietly.

"Terrifying. Free. Like falling."

"Or flying?"

"Maybe."

"I want it to be tonight." She slowly removes her shirt.

He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to control his breathing. "You're sure." It's not quite a question.

"I'm ready." She takes his shoulders and pushes him to the bed, and he lets her.

"If at any moment you change your mind..."

"Then I'll stop." She removes the rest of her clothes and joins him on the bed. She kisses him. "Touch me."

He smiles. "You never give up."

She laughs, her face a little flushed. "Touch me because I think I'm too nervous to touch you first."

That stills him for a moment. Then he reaches for her and pulls her body close to his, and for the first time, they're pressed together, skin against skin. They kiss, and it's completely mundane, and utterly extraordinary. He draws back a little, lifts his right hand and begins to trace the air around her skin with it. He watches her eyes closely as the fear leaves them. She smiles at first, but as he continues to sculpt the air around her skin without quite stroking her, she begins to get impatient, and then finally she roughly pushes him flat and straddles him.

"Fine, then I'll touch you first." She takes his cock in her hand, and he grunts softly, his body tensing.

"Don't we need to--" he stops, his throat spasming as she guides his cock inside her. It feels like heaven, but something else is happening here, something profound.

"Hush," she whispers and leans down to kiss him slowly, giving him time to adjust. Her breasts are soft against his chest, her hands are gliding up his arms.

He waits, not sure what it is he's waiting for. Just to be sure that this is real, perhaps. The dim air around them seems to be full of their breath as they sigh together. He's been drunk before, and this is a little like that. He's killed people at close range, and this is a little bit like that, too; intimate and secretive and dangerous. He reaches up to touch her face, and he feels her smile against his lips. "Be careful," he says quietly, and he's not sure whether he needs her to be careful for her own sake, or for his.

She begins to move. Everything surrounding him feels thick and rich and almost suffocating. He reaches for her.

It lasts for a few precious minutes and then he has to stop her, he can feel her body tensing up and he's so attuned to her responses by now that he doesn't even have to wonder what it means. She sighs with both irritation and relief, and dismounts him, falling to his side on the bed. "I suppose it's a start," she says breathlessly.

He turns to her and takes her hand and kisses it. "We can try again soon."

"How soon?"

"As soon as you relax."

"You look like you need to relax, too. Your face is flaming red."

He smiles. "I wonder why." A few minutes pass as they recover. He still feels strangely intoxicated; light and off-balance. He pushes his sweaty hair away from his face. "You felt amazing."

She stretches and smiles. "Tell me more."

He gazes at her. "I've always thought you were the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Right now, you're even more so."

"Listen to you, you smooth talker."

"Your skin is like silk." He thinks that probably sounds corny and overused, but she smiles and kisses his shoulder.

"Now you're making me blush."

"I thought a den of sailors couldn't make you blush."

"Feel." She presses his hand against her cheek; she's right, it's flushed and warm.

"Why are you blushing?"

"Because I believe you."

It's another way of saying that she trusts him, and it makes him feel warm all over. He tugs at a tendril of her hair. "I love your hair messed up like this."

"I think we should mess it up some more."

"How should we do that?"

"Come here..."

It takes them several hours and about six tries (and three or four different positions) before they finally find a comfortable rhythm and she's able to convince him that she doesn't need him to stop. They end in missionary position, which initially worries him because his body is covering hers, but she actually seems to prefer it that way.

As he moves in her, everything in the rest of the world disappears. There is only this; only them, the universe reduced to the rhythm of two people together in a simple bed in a simple dimmed room. The most normal thing in the world, and the most precious. He covers her mouth with his and she runs her fingers through his hair, and suddenly her voice grows high and urgent as she says his name, her thighs shaking a little against his hips. He speeds up, trying to hold on long enough for her, and he succeeds, rewarded by the sweetness of her absolute surrender, and the sweetness of his own.

Afterward, she's fragile and quiet, and he pulls away, but she pulls him back and nestles close against his chest, her face buried in his neck. He holds her and strokes her hair. "Was it like flying and falling for you too?"

"Yes. Both."

Before they drop off to sleep, she asks him whether he needs his weapons again.

He kisses her hair and says, "I trust you to protect me."

She shivers a little, and snuggles closer.

He dares for a moment to look into the future. He sees their separate work lives and their precious moments spent together, the nights they will share, the way that it will be difficult at first, and there will still be times when she is closed off or he's too anxious, but those times will become rarer and rarer until they begin to take the gift of sex for granted. But they'll never entirely do so, because she'll never forget that she keeps him alive, and he'll never forget that he's the only man who can touch her.

Then he pulls himself back into the present moment, the only moment that touches forever. And in just this one sweet moment... nothing hurts at all.

 

 

 

_Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mundo thanks to everybody who commented along the way... your support really kept me going! I hope you enjoyed the ending.


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